Michael Dobbs - Winston’s War

‘You are …’ – the Minister paused for thought, but already it was past thought, too late for anything other than gut emotion – ‘being ridiculous, woman. Hysterical. A disgrace to your sex.’

‘Only a man could be so stupid.’

‘Ask anyone. Neville is the greatest Englishman who ever lived.’

‘He makes me ashamed to be British.’

‘You dare talk of shame!’

‘Meaning?’

‘God’s sake, aren’t you tired of climbing into Winston’s bed?’

‘He might yet save us all.’

‘What? The man who’s killed off more careers than Caligula. Who’s filled the graveyards of Gallipoli.’

‘He’s a prophet –’

‘Nigger in a woodpile with a box of matches.’

‘… pointing to our mortal peril.’

‘All the more damned reason for doing a deal with Hitler, then.’

‘You’d deal with the Devil.’

‘I support my Prime Minister. Loyalty to my own. Something you wouldn’t recognize.’

‘I recognize naked cowardice.’

‘I resent that, madam. I oppose your silly war because it will destroy civilization.’

‘War against Hitler may be the only way to save civilization!’

‘Madness. Pure madness. Are you Jewish, or what?’

And all that from colleagues who sat on the same Conservative benches.

It had started with laughter and gaiety and one of Beaverbrook’s little jokes. (He had a notorious sense of humour – some argued that it had been developed to compensate for his notoriously absent sense of fidelity.) He had given specific instructions about the making of the guy that was to be burnt on the fire and it had arrived with some pomp, seated on an old wooden chair decorated with flowers from the hothouse and pushed in a wheelbarrow by a groundsman. The guy was large and overstuffed, as all good guys should be, bits of straw and paper sticking out from an old woollen three-piece suit that had been plundered from the back of a wardrobe for the occasion. Particular attention had been given to the face, which was round, bald, with a scowling expression and an open slit for a mouth. The arms were spread, as though making a speech. The guests who were crowding about Beaverbrook in the darkness applauded its entrance and drew closer to inspect.

‘So, whaddya think of the villain of the piece, Sam?’ The question was delivered in Beaverbrook’s characteristic style, with a broad Canadian accent and out of the corner of his mouth.

Sam Hoare, the Home Secretary and one of the four most powerful men in Government, studied it carefully, his wife by his side.

‘Guy Fawkes tried to blow up every politician in the land. No wonder they remember him, Max.’

Laughter rippled through the guests. They included diplomats and entertainers as well as politicians and press, all gathered around a charcoal brazier for comfort while they waited for the ceremonial lighting of the large bonfire.

‘Fawkes was a foreigner, of course. Spanish,’ someone added from the darkness.

‘Hey, ain’t nothing wrong with foreigners,’ Beaverbrook insisted in a theatrical hokey twang.

‘Just so long as we can ignore most of them, eh, Max,’ Hoare added.

‘But we can’t ignore them, Sam, that’s the whole point.’

The Home Secretary turned, a shade wearily. Even in the darkness he’d recognized the unmistakable trill of Katharine, the Duchess of Atholl and Member of Parliament for the seat of Kinross and West Perthshire. What was the point? He didn’t want any points, not now, he was trying to enjoy himself. For pity’s sake, they all had points, all passionately held and honed to a razor’s edge, but surely this wasn’t the time or the place. Not here. So the Duchess was a long-standing opponent of the Prime Minister and appeasement, they all knew that, an opponent so venomous she had earned herself the nickname of ‘Red Kitty’. She paraded her conscience everywhere, rehearsed her arguments a thousand times before breakfast and again over lunch until her intransigence had pushed her to the furthest limits of the party and, in truth, almost beyond. But Sam Hoare was a party man, loyalty first, and wasn’t going to allow her to forget it.

‘Kitty,’ he hailed his colleague, ‘didn’t see you there in the darkness. About time you came back into the light and enjoyed yourself with the rest of us, isn’t it?’

Kitty Atholl bristled. ‘Enjoyment? Is that what it’s supposed to be about, Sam? Is that why we gave Czechoslovakia away? For fun?’

‘Let’s not trespass on Max’s hospitality …’

‘Don’t mind me, Sam,’ the Beaver interjected. ‘Always encourage a healthy disagreement. Except amongst my employees, of course.’

And so it had begun. A discussion that became a debate that transformed into a character-ripping confrontation in the middle of a moonlit field and in a manner that had been matched across the land for weeks, and yet still showed no signs of exhausting itself. As they faced up to each other a squad of Boy Scouts ran around with jugs of mulled wine to top up the fuel tanks.

‘Hey, how about a toast to the guy?’

‘And death to Ribbentrop. May he die in pain.’

‘You callous witch.’

‘I’m not the one with my head buried in my red box desperately trying to ignore everything that’s happening in Europe.’

‘There you go again, fussing about Hitler. Fellow’s only digging over his own back yard.’

‘Digging graves.’

‘He’s cleaning up Germany, that’s all. He may be a dictator, but he’s also a bit of a Puritan. Like Cromwell.’

‘Cromwell didn’t slaughter Jews!’

‘For God’s sake, listening to you you’d think that pogroms started yesterday. It’s the history of Europe, woman, centuries old.’

‘Where’s your sense of justice, Sam?’

‘Kitty, we all have our consciences. But only you dine out on it.’

‘Put yours away in the closet, have you? All wrapped up in tissue paper?’

‘Any fool can go to war. And right now, only a fool would go to war.’

‘Conquest. Bloodshed. That’s what you’ll get with Hitler.’

‘Bugger it, Kitty, it’s how we won the Empire.’

‘And cowardice is how it’ll be thrown away!’

Gradually it had just become the two of them. Others fell by the wayside until it was just Sam Hoare and Red Kitty, and he had accused her of being weak-minded and a xenophobe and every other calumny that came to hand. It had gone too far. Neither could find the words to stop it and their host refused to intervene – hell, he was enjoying the game, every minute of it, one arm waving a huge cigar, the other arm linked through that of Joe Kennedy, another spectator who had stepped out of the fight several insults earlier. Beside them, out of the darkness, appeared the rotund form of Joseph Ball. Hoare saw him, and even though he was Home Secretary, feared him a little. It gave him his cue.

‘Loyalty. That’s what this is really all about,’ Hoare offered, trying to find a way out of the confrontation with a final jibe. ‘You go sleep with your strange friends but I’m a party man, Kitty. Always been a party man. And I’ll die a party man.’

Her lip twisted in mockery. ‘Dying for your principles, that I can understand, Sam. But to die for your party?’

She reached sharply towards him. He swayed back in apprehension, alarm flooding his eyes, afraid she was intent on slapping his face, but she did nothing more than grab the umbrella that was dangling over his arm. With her trophy she walked over to the stuffed guy, stared at it as though it might spring to life, then thrust the umbrella beneath its armpit and with a final glance of dark-eyed derision swept away into the night. Hoare was left standing on his own, suddenly isolated, feeling like an abandoned bicycle.